


Hineni (Here I Am)

by FanchonMoreau



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018), Jewish Scripture & Legend, מדרש | Midrash
Genre: AU, F/F, Lilith's not the only awesome lady from scripture and myth in this one, abuse mention, anyone else here ship Lilith and Eve in Hebrew School?, self harm mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 00:36:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18377336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanchonMoreau/pseuds/FanchonMoreau
Summary: "There will be time for new visions yet."At a time of great loss, and perhaps even greater transformation, Lilith takes Zelda Spellman to bed.





	Hineni (Here I Am)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before part two dropped. I have watched two eps of part two so far, but I'm confident it will be jossed pretty magnificently. It also strays from the canon of part one, but you have to read to find out precisely how. 
> 
> This AU of Sabrina leans more on Jewish myth than the show, and as such, Satan/The Dark Lord/The Devil is referred to throughout as "Samael." Samael is a Jewish angel of death, and in Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), he is a Satanic figure. Lilith is his partner. 
> 
> Abuse and self-harm are mentioned and described, and in some places sexual assault is implicit. Please read with care. 
> 
> Much thanks and love to [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak) for the beta.

_To fear you                     is to fear myself_

_To hate you                    is to hate myself_

_To desire you                 is to desire myself_

_To love you                    is to love myself_

 

_— Susan Sherman, “Lilith of the Wildwood, of the Fair Places”_

 

Lilith hadn’t meant to sleep with Zelda Spellman.

Certainly the woman was beautiful. She carried herself with a ruthless dignity that Lilith couldn’t help but admire. She was capable of fervent devotion. There was no reason for Lilith to abstain, so long as it didn’t interfere with Sabrina signing the book.

But Lilith found her _fascinating_. That was the deterrent.

She could smell her sister Hilda’s blood on her every time they met, even when Hilda was sitting right beside her. It was a wrath that Lilith recognized, especially in Mary Wardwell’s body, feeling men’s bones crack under Mary Wardwell’s blunt and brittle teeth. Did Zelda feel the same savage and vindictive rush that Lilith did, when she hit a vein and the blood poured out? Did it quietly sustain her, when she found herself doubting her faith?

Did she try to stop, and fail? Did she starve for it, as Lilith did? Did she ever feel sated?

It was all too intoxicating to think about. And she couldn’t afford to be distracted, not with Sabrina trying to foil her at every turn.

So it was a delightful surprise when Zelda showed up at her office, alone, not long after Lilith succeeded in getting Sabrina to sign the book. She was still in her stolen flesh and waiting for her next instruction, and she knew it wasn’t the worst idea, staying on Earth to keep an eye on the Spellman girl. But it was so terribly _dull._ At least with Zelda she could have some fun.

But something was wrong. Zelda came to her with her head bowed and her hands folded—the prettiest picture of submission. It made Lilith’s stomach turn.

“I’ve been a fool,” Zelda said.

She _knew._

Zelda was no fool, but Lilith said nothing. She let her approach the desk. She did nothing to stop her from falling to her knees before her.

“Get up,” Lilith hissed. “If you’ve come here because you know who I am, then get up.”

And Zelda did. She watched as Lilith gathered her things, and she stood frozen in place as Lilith walked to the door and turned out the lights.

“Well?” Lilith snapped. “Are you coming?”

Zelda paused for a moment, transfixed, understanding the invitation and completely in awe of it. She nodded. Lilith sighed and, with a snap of her fingers, magicked them back to Mary’s cottage.

Zelda was as wide-eyed as a lamb going to slaughter, at first. Unbelieving of the fact that a deity like Lilith would even look at her, and tripping over her words in a vain attempt to spit out every unholy epithet in her Satanic Bible.

“How sweet,” Lilith said, sneering. “But I don’t want your prayers, Zelda Spellman.”

She laid Zelda out on her queen size bed and spent long moments just admiring her. She crawled over her until she was on her knees above her, seeing all of her, smiling down, like a mortal might imagine God.

“The problem with worship,” Lilith said, biting into every word, “is that it is passive. You can yammer away for me all you like, but don’t call it devotion. Not when I can feel everything you hold back, Zelda. What dark thing can you illuminate, Zelda, if you saw yourself fully?”

Zelda couldn’t speak. She filled the silence only with her panting, which she tried desperately to hide. But Lilith knew how wet she was. And how _unsatisfied_ , always finding herself in the wrong beds, at the mercy of the wrong people.

“Zelda Spellman,” Lilith sing-songed, laughing at how her tongue tripped over the syllables. “What do you want?”

Zelda swallowed. Her mouth opened and closed uselessly, until she let out a strangled groan. She didn’t know how to touch a being like Lilith, so she wallowed in her desire. Eventually, she reached out to try to touch Lilith’s breast.  

Lilith cast a spell and froze Zelda’s hand in mid-air. “Stop trying to control yourself. We both know you can’t.” Lilith shook her head and clicked her tongue. “I suppose if you won’t tell me what you want, I must tell you.” She vanished their clothes until they were both in just bras and panties. Then she lowered herself down so their breasts were touching and their legs were entwined, and she ground her knee against Zelda’s cunt.

“You want me, for a start,” she whispered. She replaced her knee with her hand and rubbed quick tight circles over Zelda’s lacy underthings. “Oh so much. You’re going to come in your underwear like teenager, aren’t you? Just like that?”

And Zelda did, with all of the force and heat of hellfire itself. From barely a touch. Lilith smiled proudly and rolled on her side, stroking Zelda’s belly and breasts as she came down from her orgasm.

Lilith cradled Zelda’s face and forced her to look her straight in the eye. “I’ll ask again. What do you want, Zelda Spellman?”

Zelda’s gaze dropped down to Lilith’s lips. Lilith drew a lazy hand up her inner thigh, and Zelda’s eyes shot open as Lilith got closer and closer to her cunt. She vanished Zelda's panties away and stroked her fingers through Zelda’s damp curls, drawing the tiniest, sweetest little whimpers out of her. And then, as soon as Zelda was ready to be touched, she pulled her hand away.

Zelda groaned in frustration. She tried to reach for Lilith’s hand and guide it back, but Lilith wouldn’t let her. She tried to reach down and touch herself, but Lilith stopped her hand with a simple spell.

“Do you want me to beg?” Zelda rasped out, “is that what you want?”

Lilith cocked her head to the side and smirked. ”I don’t want anything. Tell me what _you_ want _,_ Zelda.”

“Please, please, just. Please just fuck me,” Zelda pleaded. “For Satan’s sake, just fuck me.”

Lilith bristled at the name. If Zelda were to call out for anyone it would be her. She licked her lips, and then rolled herself over and covered Zelda with her body.

“Oh, Zelda,” she laughed. “When you touch yourself, when you are truly alone with yourself, and not performing your pleasure for the imagined audience of the Dark Lord, what do you see?”

Zelda’s breath caught. “I don’t—”

“Masturbate?” Lilith finished, and then snickered. “No, you imagine when you come that it’s an offering to the Dark Lord, don’t you? Or perhaps an offering to me now, hm? But let us not lie to ourselves, Zelda. It’s just _yours_. So when you come, Zelda Spellman, what is it that takes you there?”

Zelda was trembling, now. She took a long breath, and then she threw both her arms around Lilith’s neck and kissed her. It was wet and messy, with their teeth crashing and Zelda’s tongue moving gracelessly into Lilith’s mouth, but Lilith didn’t dare stop her. She felt Zelda’s hand moving her head to her neck, and Lilith obliged, kissing and sucking at her skin until Zelda touched her cheek to stop her.

She reached out and pushed Lilith’s head far, far down her body.

Lilith beamed. “Good girl.”

She dragged Zelda to the very edge of the bed. Then, she fell to her knees.

*******

It was Jezebel who suggested she take a lover.

“He’s wasting your time with a fool’s errand,” she said as she lit another stick of incense and dropped in into a silver bowl by her bedside. Her room on the outskirts of Hell wasn’t large, but she filled it with such finery that it almost felt worthy of a queen of her stature and power. Almost. Lilith threw a hand-spun silk robe over her naked body and picked at the delicate gold lace at the sleeve.

“And not a distraction, Lilith,” Jezebel continued. “Find one of his witches and fuck her properly. It will give you sustenance when you’re in a mortal body and chasing a sixteen year-old girl. Besides, I promise he’ll hate it.”

Jezebel grinned at her own cleverness. She plucked a chocolate from one of the goblets on the floor and gestured for Lilith to open her mouth. She did, and then she licked the chocolate ganache from Jezebel’s fingers. Jezebel had chosen a heavier form tonight, one that had Lilith burying her head in full breasts and thick thighs, seeking comfort, accepting anything that Jezebel had to give.

She needed it, right now. And that enraged her.

“It’s all your own fault, though,” Jezebel said, eating two chocolates in quick succession. “You’re only doing his bidding so you can go crawling on your belly back to Eve.” She hissed, and then started to laugh.

Lilith’s face grew hot. How dare she. Just because Eve had been banished—

How _dare_ she.

Lilith tore the robe from her body. She bound off the bed, held the robe up for Jezebel to see, and then shredded it to scraps of silk and gold. Eve was the very fire of the dawn of time, Eve was a goddess, and their sister, and her absence was not a sword that Jezebel could hang over her head when it suited her. And after she _trusted_ Jezebel so much. Lilith let out a shriek that rattled all of the precious metals around them.

A long silence passed. Jezebel lowered her eyes. “That’s fair,” she said. She reached down for her goblet of chocolates and held it out as an offering. “Peace, sister?”

Lilith kicked the remains of the robe behind her. She huffed and preened, but eventually she relented. She sat next to Jezebel and ate from her cup.

Jezebel slid behind her and ran her hands down her arms. “I’m sorry, sister. It was not my place.” She kissed Lilith’s cheek and let her face fall to her shoulder. Lilith felt her breathe in.

But she stayed still as a corpse in Jezebel’s arms. “I do not have the power I used to,” she said, letting her voice diminish into a hush. “Nor do you. So let me ask what I came here to ask. Have you come to a decision, sister?”

Jezebel nodded into Lilith’s neck. And then she turned around and grabbed something from behind her. Lilith’s whole body relaxed.

“Close your eyes,” Jezebel instructed.

Lilith felt a small stone and a thin chain fall just below her collarbone. Jezebel pulled the necklace up and secured it, and she was barely finished when Lilith opened her eyes to look at the jewel.

Jezebel laughed. “Cheat.” She procured a hand mirror, and Lilith studied her reflection. A small garnet hanging by a gold chain. There was nothing simpler, or more beautiful. She nodded her approval to Jezebel, and Jezebel knelt on the bed beside her.

“Sister.” Jezebel clasped Lilith’s hands in her own. “You will have the highest powers smite us from existence. But I would not go any other way. I will gather my hounds. I am here. I am ready.”

Jezebel took the garnet and kissed it. Eve’s favorite stone. Lilith closed her eyes and breathed in, as if she could feel Eve’s touch on the tiny jewel or the barely-there string of gold.

“You mean it?” she whispered.

“ _Lilit_ ,” Jezebel breathed—the ancient tongue, her truest name. It sounded vast, wild, exalted in Jezebel’s mouth. “Yes. My answer is yes.”

*******

In time, Zelda grew brave.

She learned what she wanted from Lilith, and asked for it. The emerald robe, with the plunging neckline. Silk rope to tie her to the bed, a satin blindfold so Lilith could ravish her in the dark. For Lilith to take her from behind, fuck her hard, and call her _good_. She came gasping, shaking, crying out, but it was still the Dark Lord’s name on her lips.

“That was new for me,” Zelda admitted after. “The praise… thing.”

Lilith laughed. “You were just waiting for the right partner. Clearly you enjoyed it.”

Zelda blushed. “I always enjoy it with you. How could I not? With you being, well. With you being who you are.” She smiled faintly, and then she magically dressed herself and muttered an inane excuse about Sabrina before seeing herself out.

When she left, her hair was still a fright. She’d forgotten to spell it back into shape, poor dear. Lilith sat on her windowsill and watched her stumble into her ridiculous monstrosity of a hearse and drive away.

“Oh, Zelda Spellman,” she sighed. “You could be so much more.”  

Lilith didn’t hear from her for nearly a week. When she finally returned, she came to Lilith’s bedroom bearing a cat-of-nine-tails.

Zelda placed it on the bed between them, and Lilith eyed it with equal parts curiosity and trepidation. “For you to use on me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Zelda stared down at the whip and pointedly not at Lilith. “For you to use on me.”

Lilith snatched the instrument up from the bed and inspected it. It was certainly suitable: quality leather, sturdy knots at the end of each long, thin tail. A whip meant to impart great pain and leave scars. She frowned. “Is that what you want?”

“Of course,” Zelda said, too quickly.

Lilith gripped the whip tight and held it as far away from Zelda as she could. She and Samael had loved playing with whips like this, back when it was just the two of them and her children. Hell was barely a spark in the ground then. But as Samael’s empire grew, it changed.

He wanted her on her knees, or on her stomach, or spread-eagled on the floor. He stopped letting her use the whip on him. He brought it out, with hooks and chains, to remind her what she was to him. To keep her in her place.

And she bore it. Because what else was she to do?

Zelda still wouldn’t meet her eyes. Lilith set the whip on the bed and reached her hand out to touch Zelda’s face. She lifted Zelda’s chin and ran two fingers down her jawline. Zelda did nothing more than wince at the contact, then purse her lips in faint disapproval of the gesture.

 _Clever girl_ , Lilith thought. Perfectly self-assured in the art of disguise. It would convince her, too, if it weren’t so familiar.

“I won’t have you lying to me, Zelda.”

Zelda jerked away from her. “Why in Satan’s name would I lie to you?”

Lilith bit down a laugh. For the same reason she’d lied to herself, even if she didn’t know it. Samael and his witches—he trained them to whip themselves to shreds for every act that displeased him, and then convince themselves they wanted it.

She wouldn’t ask that of Zelda.

“Do not misunderstand me,” Lilith said sharply. “I will do anything in service of your pleasure. But I will not use this to hurt you, Zelda. Not if you’re seeking punishment for some imagined crime.”

“But I don’t want you to punish me,” Zelda said, bewildered. “I want...” she started, and then trailed off. “I just...” she tried again, and came up with nothing.

Lilith offered her a sad smile. “What do you want?”

Zelda swallowed and nodded. She stared at the whip, at her hands, at Lilith’s hands, at the bedspread, the walls, the floor. At the mirrors reflecting off each other at the vanity. At the pentagram around her own neck. Silent. Wrestling.  

Eventually, Lilith reached for her. Zelda jumped off the bed as if burned, heels hitting the floor with a sharp clack. After a second’s imbalance, she steadied herself. She breathed in and turned to face Lilith with all of the fragile resolve she could muster.

“I want to be devoted to you,” Zelda began. “I have been devoted to you all my life. I have sought you for power and strength. And now that you are here, I want to… to _give_ myself to you.” She sniffed, and Lilith could hear the beginnings of tears in the sound. “I want to be part of what you are, but I don’t...”

 _Know how,_ Lilith finished in her head. “Oh, Zelda.” She got up and wrapped Zelda in a loose embrace. Zelda stiffened in her arms, but at Lilith’s touch—her lips at the base of her neck, her hand at the small of her back—she became as warm and soft as clay.  

Lilith laughed to herself. How lucky she was, to have Zelda Spellman’s devotion. Not even Zelda herself knew how powerful that was.

The trick was not to waste it.

“I need you to understand,” she said right in Zelda’s ear. “You are not my servant, or my conquest, or even my concubine. You are already a part of what I am.”

“Yes,” Zelda gasped, eyes fluttering shut as the weight of the words sunk in. “ _Lilith.”_

Lilith pulled her in closer. “My good, sweet girl.”

Zelda opened her eyes and drew Lilith into a wet, open mouthed kiss. She nibbled at Lilith’s mouth before biting down, caressing her lips with her teeth. Lilith leaned in, silently encouraging Zelda to bite her harder. She did, until Lilith was sure they both could taste the blood between them.

Oh, she needed Zelda to kiss her like that again.

She grabbed Zelda’s hips and spun her until the back of her legs hit the bed. Zelda grinned, newly emboldened, and licked the blood from her lips.

“Finally,” Zelda said, and dramatically heaved a sigh. “Quite frankly it’s obscene that I’ve been here this long and you haven’t fucked me yet.”

There she was, the Zelda that Lilith had so admired from a distance. Lilith moved in, kissed the corner of her mouth, and then caught her lips between her teeth. “Sharp tongue. I like that.”

Zelda chuckled. “You’d like it more if you let me use it.”

Lilith swept her eyes over her and smiled. How predictably crude; how utterly _delicious_. She could feel Zelda’s girlish idolatry ebbing away. She thought perhaps now they could see each other eye to eye. Power to power. Hunger to hunger.

Lilith removed their clothes with a practiced sweep of her hand. She laid herself naked on the bed, spread her legs, and beckoned Zelda to crawl between them. Zelda’s eyes shone, and then darkened.

“Come, Zelda,” said Lilith. “Tonight we feast.”

*******

The last time Lilith saw Eve, her garden was thriving like she’d never seen before.

The little desert plot was aflame with color. Bright orange mariposa lilies and castillejas rustled around Lilith’s calves as she walked, and the desert marigolds were in full bloom and raising their faces toward the light above, a light that neither Lilith nor Eve fully understood. It wasn’t hellfire. It wasn’t the sun. Just a light, disembodied, that burned over Eve’s garden.

A snake moved out from between the cacti and wound itself around around Lilith’s ankle. “Well, hello there, you sly thing,” she cooed. “Do you know where your mistress is?”

The snake hissed his impatience. Lilith was about to scold him when she looked up and saw Eve standing in the doorway of her tiny wooden house.

“Lilith,” she said. “I have been waiting.”

Lilith nodded. Eve looked the same as she ever did, the same as she did when she was first created from Adam’s flesh and bone. She had kept her dark skin, her rough curls, her scars and her freckles and the soft heat of her eyes, long after the end of her life on Earth.

But she did, Lilith conceded, look a little tired.

Eve invited her in, poured her a small cup of _qahwah saada_ , bitter Bedouin coffee, and laid out a plate of dates for them to share. She motioned to Lilith to join her at the single table that nearly filled the small room. “I assume Samael has finally told you,” she said.

Lilith drank her coffee in a single gulp, and picked out several dates from Eve’s plate. The sweet, to cut the bitter. That’s how Eve had always explained it. “You’re being exiled,” Lilith said, barely able to keep the vitriol from her voice. “He’s closing off the path between your garden and the pit.”

Lilith searched Eve’s face for anger, for any kind of reaction at all, but Eve just took a small sip of her coffee and furrowed her brow. Lilith balled both her hands into fists. In all her years alive, she’d spent more time in Eve’s bed than anyone else’s—even Samael’s. Sometimes they fucked through the night, but sometimes all she did was lie naked next to Eve and wait for a breeze to come through window and cool her Hell-scorched skin. Eve put soothing eucalyptus leaves on her welts and bruises. Told her it was going to be okay.

Lilith’s fingernails were starting to draw blood from her palms. She took a long breath in. She wasn’t going to rage, not here. Not yet. “Do you have nothing else to say, Sister?” she said, cool as she could manage.

Eve reached out, took Lilith’s hand, and opened her palm. She smoothed gentle fingers over the red indentations she found there, until they started to fade. Then, she placed a date in Lilith’s hand and folded her fingers over it. “Sometimes it is only when the bitter comes that we think to seek the sweet.”

Lilith scoffed, and popped the date in her mouth. “I don’t have time for riddles,” she said, and spit out the date’s pit onto the floor.

Eve smiled fondly. “Incorrigible,” she said. Her eyes flickered down to Lilith’s hands, now idle on the table, and leaned in and entangled their fingers. Her smile widened. “I can feel that you’re angry, Lilith. Your anger blows through this place on a hot wind, sometimes, do you realize that? I listen to it howl. And I miss you, and I hope you’re alright. But I know that you’re out there and you’re fighting.”

Lilith bit her lip, hard. How long had she been fighting, and at what cost? In her time at Samael’s side, she had hurled so much fury into the flames of Hell just so she could be the concubine he wanted. And she had spent so much of her time in Eve’s desert garden throwing her beaten body into the sand and raging at the empty sky.

And Eve had looked on without judgment or pity. She just stood by, bore witness. And when Lilith was done, she brought her back to her home, fed her pomegranates and raisins, and took her to bed.

And now Lilith would never see her again.

Lilith kicked her chair away and let out a bone-rattling wail. “I’m _losing_ !” she screamed through her tears. “I’ve _lost!_ It doesn’t matter how much I fight because I’ve already _lost! I’ve lost you!_ ”

Lilith crumpled to the floor. She howled into her hands until her voice turned to dust in her throat.  Outside, the palms of Eve’s date trees snapped from their branches and whipped at the window before the whole tree collapsed around the walls of the house.

After a long moment, she became aware of Eve kneeling beside her. She gathered Lilith in her arms and held her until the last of the sobs subsided. Lilith clung to her, and she wondered in a strange fit of helplessness if she could she crawl inside the deep, still well of Eve’s body and stay.

She rest her head on Eve’s breast and let that be enough.

“He’s punishing me,” Lilith choked out, finally finding her voice again. “But I don’t know for what. And I don’t know what to do.”

Eve wound a gentle hand into Lilith’s hair. “Perhaps he’s punishing you,” she whispered. “But more than that, he’s doing this because he’s scared of you.”

Lilith shook her head. “He’s made me powerless.”  

“Not powerless,” Eve said, with so much conviction that Lilith almost believed her. Eve eased Lilith into a sitting position, and before Lilith could protest, they were both sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor, with their knees just touching.

Eve looked around. “This isn’t right,” she said, and in a second they were sitting together in the sand, with a circle of blooming bougainvillea bushes around them. Their knees were still touching.

Lilith eyed the display suspiciously. The pink bougainvillea were too garish, and the sand too fine-grained and too easily swept away by the wind. “This is a mirage, Eve,” she said, keeping her eyes down. “You don’t have the power to grow these flowers on your own. It’s why you have to tend your garden.”

Eve smirked, and then she reached behind her into the thorny bougainvillea bush. Her hand came away with thorns sticking out of her fingertips and thin lines of blood streaked across her knuckles. But she was holding a single flower.

She leaned in and carefully tucked the flower behind Lilith’s ear. “For you.”

Lilith could feel the prickle of the thorns near her hair, real as anything could ever be. And if she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could hear the faint hum of Eve’s magic, magic that Samael had all but denied her so many years ago.

Lilith looped her arm around Eve’s neck and pulled her in for a quick, hard kiss. “Incorrigible,” she breathed against Eve’s lips.

“Don’t you see it, Lilith? He’s _terrified_ of us,” Eve said. “If we brought our power together, do you know what we could be capable of?”

Lilith nuzzled her head against Eve’s shoulder and started trailing little bites down her collarbone. “Tell me.”

“Not just us,” Eve murmured into Lilith’s hair. “Your sisters in your kingdom, Delilah and Jezebel. And my sisters, the women who God left to languish in limbo. Judith. Vashti. Esther. Yael. Tamar. Bathsheba. Those who acted for the Holy Name but were shunned for their disobedience, or their violence, or their anger. If all of us have more power than we think do, then nothing will be the same again.”

Lilith picked her head up and met Eve’s eyes. They were sparkling like she’d never seen before. “How do you mean?” Lilith asked softly.

Eve sighed. “You’re desperately unhappy. You’ve grown to hate Samael, and what he makes you do. Kill your own children. Clean up after his witches’ messes. Parade around in corpses of mortal women who you _know_ deserve better. We can end his reign, Lilith. You can be _free._ We can all be free.”

 _But I am free_ , whispered a small voice in her head, even though she knew it was not true. She remembered roaring that at Eve a millennium ago, with the air around her spitting hellfire. She thought she didn’t need Eve then. She thought that Samael would let her be free.

Lilith pushed herself out of Eve’s arms. “And how do we suggest we do this?”

“I don’t know,” Eve admitted with a shrug. She waved her hand and the bougainvillea bushes shed their petals. The wind picked them and left them in their hair, on their shoulders, in their laps, and at their feet, where suddenly sharp green grass was beginning to grow.

Lilith snorted. “Show off.”

Eve laughed in the full, melodious way that Lilith loved. “Come here, _habibti_.”  

Eve’s oldest pet name for her. Lilith walked to her and melted into her embrace. She kissed Eve with all of the rage and longing within her, and then she took her hand and led her to bed.

Later, they lay on the floor of Eve’s house together, wrapped in one of Eve’s fine cotton sheets.

“What will come of it, if you succeed?” Lilith asked.

Eve kept her eyes trained on the ceiling. “I can’t say for certain. But, perhaps… no Hell. No Heaven either. Just you, and me, and our sisters. Watching over.”

Lilith frowned. “Watching over what?”

Eve turned her head to look at her and smiled, sweet and easy. “This world, and the world to come.”

Lilith inhaled sharply. If you laid waste to Heaven and Hell, then what was left? And what of God, and Samael? She met Eve’s eyes and found something quiet and certain there, something she couldn’t recognize but trusted nonetheless.

“What do I need to do?” Lilith asked softly.

Eve reached down and entwined all of their fingers. “Samael mustn’t suspect. Do whatever absurd and petty things he asks. But seek out your sisters in Hell. Convince them. And I will convince the rest. When we know what comes next, I will call for you.”

Lilith closed her eyes, and tried not to see the punishments that would come, should Samael discover her. “You will call for me?”

“Of course I will, _Lilit_ ,” Eve whispered, and kissed Lilith’s eyelids. Lilith shuddered at the touch of her lips. “You will answer?”

She nodded. “I will,” she said.

Eve slept through the night. Lilith lay beside her, awake and dreaming wildly.

*******

“Whatever happened to your wings?” Zelda asked.

They were lying in Zelda’s newly-giant enchanted bed, fully exhausted after spending the whole day having sex. The sun had set several hours ago, and with Zelda’s candles long blown out, their movements were shadow to shadow, dark to dark. Zelda was running her hands up and down Lilith’s back, digging her fingernails in and making long, jagged shapes where wings might have been.

Lilith leaned into the pain. “My wings?” she said, keeping her voice level, betraying nothing. “Don’t believe every story you hear.”

Zelda rolled out of Lilith’s embrace and collapsed against the pillows. She sprawled out on the bed, arms and legs loose across the sheets, and let out a soft laugh. “Edward mocked me mercilessly for believing you had wings,” she said. “Told me you were a weak goddess to pray to. Wings or not, to the victor, the spoils, hmm?”

Lilith cracked a smile, even as anger flared beneath her breastbone. _A weak goddess._ She hoped there was enough left of Edward Spellman’s pathetic little soul for him to see all the favor she bestowed on his sister.

She shifted closer to Zelda, tucking herself neatly between her arm and shoulder. She offered her lips for a kiss, and Zelda responded with a recognizable hunger, and a gentleness that seemed to surprise her. Zelda broke the kiss and brought her fingers to her mouth, pretending to wipe away a lipstick stain that very obviously wasn’t there.

Lilith watched her with interest. For a moment she imagined Zelda as a girl, perhaps before her Dark Baptism, describing the fearsome, winged, uncontrollable goddess she loved to her dismissive older brother.

Lilith blinked, and the vision dissolved. She looked back at Zelda and found that she had composed herself; she was sitting up bone-straight on the bed. Not ideal, but Lilith could work with it. “And what spoils are those, sweet Zelda?” she asked in a wicked whisper, snaking a hand between Zelda’s knees. Zelda reached down and stopped her.

Lilith pouted. “No? We can try the riding crop again, if you like…”

Zelda rolled her eyes at that, but she couldn’t quite hide her little grin. Even though they ruled the whip out, Lilith still introduced Zelda to her vast collection of toys. Zelda took to a gold-tipped riding crop that had been a gift from Jezebel several centuries back. Lilith loved the pretty pink marks it left, and how it made Zelda grunt and moan and cry out with her whole voice. But she also loved holding Zelda after, caressing the small of her back, purring my _sweet, good, perfect girl_ into her skin and making her come over and over again on her fingers.

Lilith hummed to herself. She leaned in and kissed Zelda’s jaw, the corner of the mouth.

Zelda turned her head away. “Give me a minute,” she said, sliding off the bed and retrieving her cigarette and its holder. “Not all of us are ageless beings from the dawn of time.”   

Lilith bit down a chuckle. “Very funny,” she drawled. “But if you had any idea what I had planned for you, you’d get right back to bed.”

She was hoping that Zelda would comply, or perhaps, even better, give her one of her exquisitely withering remarks. But instead Lilith saw something dark pass across her face, something Zelda was trying to keep hidden.

Lilith fixed her eyes on Zelda. Zelda looked away. Lilith tilted her head and waited for Zelda to relent. Zelda raised an eyebrow, as if pleading ignorance, but eventually she heaved a sigh and sat down next to Lilith on the bed.

Lilith carefully placed her hands around Zelda’s shoulders and kissed her neck. The tension drained from Zelda’s body, but the magic in her blood quickened and swelled under Lilith’s touch.

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m losing my mind when I’m with you,” Zelda whispered, voice giving way to an ecstatic hush. “Like I’m capable of astonishing and _insane_ things. And that I’d really do them.”

Zelda took another shaky drag of her cigarette. The ashes landed on her bare thighs and she whisked them away with an easy charm. Lilith rubbed a slow hand down Zelda’s thigh, right where the last of the burn still lingered.

“My gorgeous, powerful Zelda,” said Lilith. “What would you do?”

There was a long silence. Zelda vanished her cigarette and holder and started picking at a stray thread in the sheet. Lilith magicked the thread away and held Zelda’s hand beneath hers to keep it still.

“Sabrina,” Zelda started softly. “He sent you to her. And he wouldn’t do that unless he wanted… unless he wanted…”

Her voice faltered. Lilith knew what she would say next: Samael would only send a concubine if he wanted to raise a new concubine. A woman as devout as Zelda should see that as an honor for her niece.

But Zelda didn’t. And Lilith suspected why, but she wanted to hear Zelda say it.

“She’s so young,” Zelda sputtered out. “Sixteen, still a _child_. Does he want to, what, deflower her himself, instead of letting an age-appropriate warlock do it? And if...”

She paused. She looked up, searching Lilith’s eyes for something to anchor her. Lilith couldn’t tell if she found it. But she kept on.

“And if Sabrina tells him no, what then?”

Lilith moved away from Zelda. She focused on the bed sheets, the window, the smoothness of Mary Wardwell’s wrists and forearms. She thought of the scars she had there, in another form, in another lifetime.

What then, indeed.

She turned back to Zelda, saw that she was now trembling in fear. But she kept her head high and her gaze steady. Her hair glowed red and gold, even though the room was almost completely dark.

Red. Lilith was red, too, at the very beginning. It was the way God made her.

“You want to stop the Dark Lord,” Lilith said. It wasn’t a question.

Zelda’s eyes shot wide open. She jumped off the bed, crashed to her knees. Seized Lilith’s hands and brought them to her lips in supplication.

“No, _please_ ,” she begged. “I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it. Great Lilith, Mother of Demons—”

Lilith leaned down and lifted Zelda’s chin up. Zelda was weeping. And she was, of all things, back on her knees. This had not been Lilith’s intention when she brought her to her bed.

But what would become of Zelda, after she and Eve and their sisters overthrew the Church of Night? Was there a path for her, in this world that she and Eve had yet to forge?

Zelda Spellman, arbiter of justice. Zelda Spellman, right hand of the Godhead. Zelda Spellman—prophetess, matriarch, queen.  

Lilith slid to the floor and knelt at Zelda’s side. Zelda blinked, bewildered, and opened her mouth to speak. Lilith touched Zelda’s lips, a silent plea for her trust. Zelda nodded.

“You asked me about my wings,” Lilith began. “I did have wings once, a very long time ago. But a fallen angel saw my wings, and was overcome with jealousy. So he had me rip off my wings with my own bare hands.”

“A fallen angel…” Zelda echoed. Her tears welled anew. “What… what are you saying?”

“I think you know, Zelda,” said Lilith. She cupped Zelda’s face in her hand and felt Zelda unconsciously move into the touch. “I think you’ve known for much longer than you’d even admit to yourself.”

Zelda pulled away, and she tried to close her eyes against her tears. But she couldn’t stop them. She wept until desperate sobs began to wrack her body, until she was so overcome with helplessness and rage the she cried out in anguish. And right then Lilith saw her clearly—the pride that emboldened her, the fear that made her cruel and brought her shame. And she saw, too, the love and devotion that secretly sustained her.

And it wasn’t love for Samael.

“There will be time for new visions yet,” Lilith whispered. “But for now, it is getting very late.” She covered Zelda’s eyes with her hand. “I think it’s best you get to sleep.”

Zelda nodded as she fell under Lilith’s spell. Lilith swept her sleeping form into her arms and placed her gingerly on the bed. She could make her forget, if she wanted. Perhaps she would need to.

Perhaps she would not.

She gave Zelda dreams. Vast expanses of desert, a well emptied of water. Brambles and thorny cactus flowers and desert roses with their poison sap seeping out. A baby girl crying, and a narrow path leading Zelda to her.

Lilith sat by the window as the long night passed. There were no stars, no moon, and no one was calling for her.

*******

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was shapeless and formless, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

After the first wife of Adam freed herself from the Garden of Eden, she sought out that darkness. She searched for it in the depth of the sea and in the arms of the demons. She chased it from the suckling mouths of her children to the deep holes she dug to bury them as God killed them by the hundreds.

The closest she got was the bed of a fallen angel. He carried primordial black and red fire with him, and together they let that burning darkness consume them. She was more satisfied then than she had ever been. Well-fucked and utterly careless, she promised him eternity, so long as he let her be free.

And for a while, he did.

She wandered the land near what used to be the Garden. She had heard of the death of Abel, and how God had torn Adam and Eve apart. Eve lived alone now, her children either dead or scattered across the young continent, populating the species. And she had nothing but the stone and wood shack she built for herself and the barren land around it.

But when she emerged from her home, with dirt on her cheeks and ash on her hands, Lilith knew that God in His creation had made nothing as beautiful as her.

Lilith hid herself behind a pomegranate tree and watched her. She was naked under the hot desert sun, her body full and gorgeous in the light. Her skin was darker than Lilith’s, and her arms and her legs and her cunt were all covered in thick black hair. And when she smiled, just a little, at the petals that blew by her in the breeze, Lilith felt her chest tighten and her blood stain her cheeks pink.

She watched as Eve dragged water from the well in a battered wooden pail. Eve held the pail in her arms and tiny droplets of water spilled from it and hissed as they hit the desert soil below.

It had been so long since Lilith had needed water. Suddenly she was thirsty.

Lilith emerged from behind the tree, naked and dishevelled and with leaves clinging to her long red hair. Eve looked at her with warm eyes and Lilith felt more exposed than she had ever been.

 _You’re not one of my daughters,_ Eve said, curious. Not afraid.

Lilith shook her head. _I am Lilit._

At that, Eve grinned. _I am Chava,_ she said. _Adam said you were a demon. But you’re not._

 _No,_ Lilith whispered _. I am not._

Eve offered Lilith her pail. Lilith drank handfuls of sweet water as Eve told her of her children, her grandchildren, of the animals near her little house, of how the stars changed as the seasons passed. As the sun began to set, Eve spoke of Abel, and of Cain, and of the last time she saw Adam.

The lay on the ground together, side by side, and watched as the stars became visible. _I know God’s here with me_ , Eve said. Lilith ran her fingers close to Eve’s hand, but she didn’t dare touch. _God sends me water to drink, and animals to eat, and fire to warm me. But He does not return Adam to me. He does not lead me back to my son Cain. I think, Lilith… I think He is just keeping me alive. I think He just wants me to suffer._

Lilith said nothing to deny it.

 _Do you think He’s punishing me?_ Eve asked.

Lilith let out a long breath. She looked up, and there were tears in her vision. She was starting to cry.

 _Yes,_ Lilith said. _I think He’s punishing you, as He’s punishing me. And He will punish us over and over again, and He will punish our children, and our children’s children. Until He gets bored of us and abandons us. Or destroys us._

Eve turned on her side and reached out, tucked a piece of Lilith’s hair behind her ear. _You hate Him._

Lilith wrapped an arm around her. Eve was quiet, but trembling. Her body roused something hot and gentle in Lilith, something that was neither blessed nor damned. She caressed the skin between Eve’s shoulder blades.

 _Perhaps_ , Lilith admitted softly. _Because He’s hurt me. And He’s hurt you, too. You don’t have to worship Him. You don’t even have to forgive him._

Eve stilled. She gazed briefly at the moonless sky and all its stars. _Thank you_ , she said.

And then she kissed her.

Lilith flinched in shock, and then she pressed their bodies together tight and kissed her back.

She made love to her all night. Eve clawed at her skin, flooded her hands and her mouth, whispered her name, sanctified it with her whimpers and her sighs. By morning, she was howling in Lilith’s arms, releasing her loneliness and her grief and her fury and her pleasure into the heavens.

Lilith hoped against hope that God was listening.

After, they fed each other pomegranates and kissed the nectar from each other’s mouths. And when Eve fell asleep in her embrace, Lilith unfolded her enormous wings and wrapped Eve in the soft warmth of them for a very long time.

She did leave, in the end. But when Eve died, and God wouldn’t take her, Lilith pleaded with Samael to bring Eve to their realm as her consort. As a method of torture, she claimed. Samael agreed, except he cast her just beyond Hell’s borders, gave her mere scraps of magic, and as time went on, let Lilith see her less and less. And then not at all.

God created the heavens and the Earth, the bible said. But the truest story, Lilith knew, was this: God created Eve. Eve created the rest.

***

Lilith took her time leaving the Spellman house.

It wasn’t wise of her to linger, yet she did anyway. She cloaked herself in morning shadow and disappeared into the library and the morgue. She found a strange room, hidden away not far from where Sabrina slept and protected with several strong enchantments.

It was a nursery. There was a bassinet, a few infant dresses. A rattle, made of pure silver, that was spelled never to rust. A cloth bat with part of a wing chewed off.

Sabrina’s old things, surely. Zelda had patched them all up by magic and readied them for a new baby. Lilith hadn’t remembered how she had stolen that child away from Blackwood, and then given it up to keep it safe.

Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to remember.

Lilith gripped the edge of the bassinet. Not long ago, she would have eaten that child. She wouldn’t have been able to help it. Because God killed her children, and the only way to bring them back to her body and keep them safe was to eat them.

She couldn’t eat _them_ precisely; they were already gone. So she ate human and witch shadows of them. She tore infants from wombs and suffocated them in their cribs, and then gorged on their fatty limbs, licked blood from their soft skulls, cracked their tiny bones under her teeth. She ate for days on end.

She let go of the bassinet and wrapped her arms around herself. She took a final look at piles of baby things, and how Zelda so painstakingly arranged them, before recasting Zelda’s protection spells and shutting the nursery door behind her.

“Zelda Spellman,” she said to no one. “How very wise you are.”

She padded down the front staircase still lost in thought, for a moment not remembering that she could just magick herself away. She didn’t notice the sounds of a house beginning to stir. She went to slip out the front door when she suddenly found herself face to face with Sabrina.

“Oh, hey, Miss Wardwell,” Sabrina said, with none of the shock Lilith would have expected from a girl who found her teacher in her house early in the morning. She was bundled up in a few ratty sweaters and drinking what smelled like a warming draught from a mug shaped like a cat’s head. “Aunt Hilda’s doing some damage control in the garden,” she continued. “Apparently we’ve got a pretty bad pest problem. I’ve been recruited to help.”

Lilith gaped at Sabrina. “I—” she began, but she could find nothing to say. Something in the pit of her stomach growled, and a deep flush burned its way down her skin. Something was wrong. There was somewhere she needed to be, but she wasn’t sure where, or how to get there, or what might be waiting for her when she arrived.

She couldn’t pay the feeling any mind. Right now, she needed to be Miss Wardwell for Sabrina, so she straightened her posture and gave Sabrina a tight smile. “Well, this is unexpected,” she said, shaping her voice into the sharp and lilting cadence she used as Sabrina’s teacher.

Sabrina shrugged. “Not really. We’ve known you and Aunt Zee were a thing for at least a month.”

Lilith tried to summon a response, but before she could Hilda bustled into the room with a large pail of gardening supplies and watering can full of a concoction Lilith couldn’t sniff out. “Good morning, Mary,” she chirped, and then sighed. “It’s so nice to finally see your face after all of that ridiculous secrecy. Zelda thinks she is _so_ clever, but she’s as transparent as a teenager sneaking her crush through the back window!” She giggled a bit, and then laid a hand on Lilith’s arm. To her own great surprise, Lilith didn’t pull away. “Well, whatever it is you’re doing, I’ve never seen Zelda quite so content,” she whispered. “I’m so happy for you both.”

With that, Hilda walked to the door, which Sabrina quickly magicked open. “Show off,” Hilda muttered. Lilith followed them into yard, an unknown force within her body pulling her forward.

Hilda was already kneeling beside a bare patch of ground, with Sabrina standing over her. “Snake infestation in the Cain Pit,” Hilda said. “One or two usually come and go every so often, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. There are at least seven now, and they’re starting to eat my garden.” She held up her watering can. “This should keep them buried for a bit while we figure out what’s wrong.”

Lilith stared at the pit with unblinking eyes. A Cain Pit. A _Cain_ Pit. Of course. The Spellmans must have thought Samael sent this to them. But they were wrong.

Because sometimes a Cain Pit was sent by Cain’s mother.

Lilith put a hand on Hilda’s shoulder. “Hildegard, don’t,” she said softly. Her tightly-controlled Mary Wardwell voice fell away.

Hilda looked up. “Sorry?”

Lilith bent down and placed her hands over the dirt. She could feel Sabrina’s eyes burning into her back. “What are you doing?” Sabrina spit out.

Lilith’s hand touched the pit. A large snake broke through the ground and lept into her hand. It slithered its way up her arm until its head was resting on her shoulder. She could feel another winding its way around her ankle.

“Oh, you clever things,” she breathed. The snakes absorbed the strange heat in her skin and hissed their approval. Lilith touched her nose to the snake’s and felt herself beginning to cry. Eve was near.

Eve was calling her.

Just then, a shadow fell over the three of them. Footsteps grew close, as did the sound of silk moving with skin. Lilith looked up and saw Zelda in her black dressing gown, towering above her, infuriated and magnificent.  

“What in the name of all the realms of Hell is going on here?” Zelda snapped.

Sabrina threw up her arms. “Hey, don’t look it at me. I had nothing to do with this.”

Hilda was standing now, awkwardly shifting from side to side. “Perhaps you ought to ask your _girlfriend_ , Zelds.”

Zelda opened her mouth to protest, but then she saw Lilith and was rendered mute. Lilith knew that they could feel the heat that left her body in waves, could see a warm, primordial light start to swell around her.

The light shining over Eve’s garden. She’d plucked it out of her sky, as an offering. As a promise.

Lilith stood up and approached Zelda slowly, deliberately. She reached out for her cheek but didn’t touch it, pulled away at the last moment. “My dear Zelda,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. But I have to go.”

“Go?” Zelda repeated numbly, “go where?”

Lilith gave her a fragile smile before looking at the pit. Another snake was curling around her ankle. “I can’t say,” she said. “I just have to go.”

Zelda gasped and then stumbled backward. “That’s it? Just, just go? What about what you told me last night? After that you’re just going to… to abandon us? Like we’re nothing to you!”

Zelda glared at Lilith for several long moments. She sucked a breath in through her teeth, and the wind let out an answering whine. Somewhere in the distance a branch snapped. For a second everything was eerily still, and then Zelda’s face crumpled, and a great gust of air came billowing in all around them.

“How _dare_ you!” Zelda cried. The wind around them wailed. “How dare you abandon us! I had faith in you, and you... you have _no idea_ how much faith I had in you!  How _dare_ you give me hope and then take it away!”

She dropped to her knees. Hilda rushed to her side, but Sabrina tugged Lilith back, away from Zelda. She stared Lilith down with all of the bluster of a newly-baptized teenage girl.

“What the fuck did you do?” Sabrina hissed. “Where's Miss Wardwell? Who _are_ you?”

Lilith chuckled to herself. Around them, trees were struggling to hold themselves up against the gale. The sky darkened, but Sabrina shone stubborn and bright against it, against all the horror that she didn’t even know was coming for her.

What a place she could make for Sabrina in this new world. What a place for all of them. Hilda, too, and the nephew, provided he behaved himself. Blackwood’s girls—his bastard daughter Prudence, and the infant that Zelda saved from a terrible fate at his hands.

And perhaps all of Samael’s witches, in the end. Released from their contract, safe from his wrath. Powerful, and free.

She looked Sabrina in the eye, and then nodded at Zelda. “Ask your aunt.”

Zelda picked up her head. Hilda was rubbing her back and making small, calming noises. Zelda welled up for a moment, and then she collected herself and answered Sabrina. “She’s Lilith,” she said, her voice heavy with unshed tears and near breaking. “Made from the same dust as Adam. The first woman, and the bravest.”

Sabrina’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She looked from Zelda to Lilith in stunned confusion, while Hilda just froze where she was. Zelda stared at the ground as the wind faded into nothing but an errant whistle over the forest.

Hilda cleared her throat. “Lilith, Mother of Demons. Blimey, this is embarrassing,” she muttered, letting out a little snort.

That made Lilith laugh. She felt magnanimous, expansive. She rushed to Zelda and Hilda and offered her hands to help them stand. They took them. Sabrina followed, and Lilith swept them all into a circle, as if they were casting a spell.

“Please understand,” she said. “I will never leave you alone. Not any of you. You have my protection, as much as I can give, always. But right now, I need you to trust me.”

Sabrina scoffed. “Why should we trust you?”

Zelda squeezed Sabrina’s hand. Lilith lifted her eyes to the heavens and saw the wind gathering again in the distant trees. It shook a few leaves to ground and then retreated, held itself back. And it waited.

“Because this will be the end of the Dark Lord, Sabrina,” Lilith answered. “There’s a new world to come.”

Hilda and Sabrina looked to Zelda, who nodded solemnly. “A new vision,” said Zelda.

Lilith smiled, stepped forward, and tucked a piece of hair of behind Zelda’s ear. “The road may be long and narrow,” she said, “but whatever happens, I need you to have no fear.”

Zelda took Lilith’s hand and moved to kiss it in supplication, but Lilith leaned in and kissed her briefly instead. “None of that,” she whispered into Zelda’s mouth. “I have given you nothing you didn’t already possess, Zelda Spellman.”  Zelda smiled tightly and nodded as a few tears escaped her eyes.

“We’re not afraid,” Sabrina said from somewhere close behind them. “We won’t be afraid.”

Lilith moved back to face all three of them. Sabrina looked determined and wild, and Hilda, with all of her great and generous power, was beaming. “I will call for you,” Lilith said. “Will you answer?”

“I will,” said Hilda.

“I will,” said Sabrina.

She could feel Zelda getting closer to her, drawing nearer and nearer to Eve’s primal light. “I will,” said Zelda.

The wind blew them back, and then, without warning, it changed. A woman began to howl. And in that savage, hungry cry was a call for justice almost as old as time itself. It reached up to the throne of God, and down to the pits of Hell.

Lilith closed her eyes and listened. She had never heard Eve’s voice like that before. She took all the strength she could from the sound.

Lilith rose into the air. She let Mary’s body drop into the Cain Pit, for Eve to find and reawaken. And as she ascended, she took a new form—an aching wind, a throbbing spirit. An energy, unfettered and rapturous. The truest form she knew.

She opened her whole being to the world, and she howled back.

**Author's Note:**

> In Hebrew, "Hineni" translates to "Here I am", but it's not quite that simple. Hineni is what Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses all say to God when God calls them. To say Hineni means that you are ready and willing to do the work before you, even though it is hard. Perhaps because it is hard. And because of this, it is a great affirmation of presence and faith. 
> 
> This story owes a great debt to Jewish feminists who have written about Lilith. I have most specifically taken from Judith Plaskow's _midrash_ "The Coming of Lilith", which you can read [here,](https://jwa.org/media/coming-of-lilith-by-judith-plaskow) and Lilly Rivlin's essay "Lilith" [here.](http://www.lillyrivlin.com/Lilith-Ms.Magazine-Dec.1972.pdf) I stole the phrase "throbbing spirit" from Rivlin. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for humoring me as I took CAOS all the way through the Jewish ringer. L'chaim!


End file.
